Thursday, 22 February 2007

Well isn't that what meetings are for? Nevermind that I was supposed to be writing action outcomes, too...ooops.

Anyway, I have been pondering a vest for a friend - C. i wrote about this a few weeks ago. She bought some NZ wool and requested a vest. I've made a few before and have never been entirely happy with any that I've made. There are so many very ordinary patterns around, all a little bit daggy (that's Aussie for unfashionable, for the northerners).

So I have swatched. I'll post a photo when the swatch is dry. I've chosen this lovely almost celtic knot-like cable, because C really wants a cable down the front and i wanted to do something a bit different to the regular style cable.

And, even though I've not yet finished the steeked jacket (it's growing, it just doesn't make for great photos when you only get a few rows done every couple of days), I figure I can take what I've learned of Elizabeth Zimmerman's percentage system and apply it to the vest.

In said meeting, I was doodling the design, just thinking it all through, wondering how, once you get to the armpits (the whole thing is worked in the round) how do you then stop and do arm hole shaping and the v-neck (C wants a v-neck). I had this crazy idea that I could then put it half the stitches on a stitch holder (would have to be a bloody big one!) and work the v neck up to the shoulders and cast off. Then do the back in the same way.

No! I thought, that can't be right. Wouldn't my gauge change if I switched to working back and forth? Wouldn't someone come along and tell me you can't do that!So I walked out of the meeting and put the idea out of my head, thinking I might steek the arm holes and v-neck instead (says she who has not yet completed her first (successful) steek.

Killing time in the last hour of the working day, I stumbled across a vest pattern on Knitty, for blokes, that declares the pattern was knit in the round up to the arm pits, then worked back and forth to do all the other stuff at the top.

HUH?

Is this then saying that I had an idea, all by myself, that is a good one? I've never seen this sort of thing done - and I'm not saying I invented this idea because clearly I didn't - but I had set myself the challenge of trying to think through what to do with this vest and am just gobsmacked that I could think of this! Finding the Knitty pattern was just confirmation of what seemed, in the middle of a meeting, like one crazy and not so good idea.

I'm not someone who trusts my instincts easily. In fact I rarely do. At the ripe old age of almost 35, isn't it time I did?